Research has suggested that long spacing (i.e., temporal intervals) within a training session facilitates second language vocabulary learning. Studies, however, have been limited to treatment that involved sessions for only initial learning but not subsequent relearning. Furthermore, most studies have investigated only the benefits of spacing…

The current study investigated the effects of repetition on the learning of second language (L2) spoken word forms. Japanese university students learning L2 English were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions (one, three, and six exposures) and learned 40 words while hearing them and viewing their corresponding pictures. A…

Scholars have extensively investigated the effectiveness of high variability phonetic training (HVPT), that is, identification and discrimination of second language speech sounds produced by multiple speakers followed by trial-by-trial feedback. Building on the notion of incidental and multimodal learning in cognitive psychology (e.g., Lim &…

The current study examined the degree to which collocation use (i.e., meaningful co-occurrences of multiple words) is related to first language (L1) raters' intuitive judgments of second language (L2) speech. Speech samples from a picture description task performed by 85 Japanese learners of English with varied L2 proficiency profiles were…

Recent research has called for the use of fine-grained measures that distinguish implicit knowledge from automatized explicit knowledge. In the current study, such measures were used to determine how the two systems interact in a naturalistic second language (L2) acquisition context. One hundred advanced L2 speakers of Japanese living in Japan…

Although cross-linguistic research on second language tense-aspect acquisition has uncovered universal tendencies concerning the association between verbal semantics and tense-aspect markers, it is still unclear what mechanisms underlie this link. This study investigates the acquisition of two imperfective aspect markers ("-ko iss-" and…

Research on second language (L2) communication strategies over the past three decades has concerned itself broadly with defining their usage in terms of planning and compensation, as well as with the use of taxonomies for coding different types of strategies. Taking a Conversation Analytic (CA) perspective, this article examines the fine-grained…

This article calls attention to a facet of the expertise of second language (L2) learners of Japanese at the intersection of language, memory, gesture, and the psycholinguistics of a logographic writing system. Previous research has shown that adult L2 learners of Japanese living in Japan (similarly to native speakers of Japanese) often…

The present study challenges the validity of elicited imitation (EI) as a measure for implicit knowledge, investigating to what extent online error detection and subsequent sentence repetition draw on implicit knowledge. To assess online detection during listening, a word monitoring component was built into an EI task. Advanced-level Japanese L2…

This article reports on how, against a background of relatively stable patterns of second language negation, a Japanese-speaking adult learning English made use of a negative formula, "I don't know," and how, in and through interaction, analyzed it into its component parts and began using "don't" more productively.…

The study compared the effects of two types of form-focused written feedback--direct corrective feedback (DCF) and metalinguistic explanation (ME) given to the whole class--on Japanese university students' accuracy of use of two grammatical structures: indefinite article and the hypothetical conditional. Both types of feedback were given with…

This study explored learners' self-generated noticing of L2 input. It is motivated by previous research on input enhancement which suggested that learners are able to notice certain aspects of input on their own without any external means to direct their attention. Drawing on insights that learner-generated noticing is largely mediated by…

The present study examined the proposal that the presence of a similar morpheme in the learner's first and second languages (L2) facilitates morphological development in the L2. Advanced Russian and Japanese speakers of English as a second language performed a self-paced reading task in which they read English sentences word by word for…

Sixty-five Japanese learners of English participated in the current study, which investigated the acquisitional value of form-focused instruction (FFI) with and without corrective feedback (CF) on learners' pronunciation development. All students received a 4-hr FFI treatment designed to encourage them to notice and practice the target feature of…

This cross-sectional study examined the effect of general proficiency and study-abroad experience on pragmatic comprehension in second-language English. Participants were 25 native English speakers and 64 Japanese college students of English divided into three groups. Group 1 (n = 22) had lower proficiency and no study-abroad experience. Group 2…